Reviewing and discussing books (mostly YA and children's), reading and writing from the perspective of a secondary English teacher, research student and writer. My research is on reading, YA and diversity, so I'm sure that will be reflected here too.

Reading Recommendations Slide 10: Family Drama

Four contemporary reads dealing with family drama for this week. All feature non-traditional families, families in crisis and teens dealing with the fallout and/or taking things into their own hands. For those of you working with Learning Power/Four Rs, it’s worth knowing that there’s lots of resilience being shown/developed in these stories, and plenty of reciprocity too, especially in Dead Ends and Orbiting Jupiter, which focus as much on friendship as they do on families. Indigo Donut has friendship as a theme too, but it’s a bit more complicated and there are more obstacles to the teamwork actually working.

I pop these recommendation slides up while I take KS4 and 5 registers (if I had yr9 classes, I’d use them there too) and allow students to read the info and decide whether they want to find any of these books. It’s a key one of my attempts to widen their reading and help them find books they might enjoy as there are certainly plenty of those out there, and the curriculum doesn’t always make it easy for us to present students with a pleasurable reading experience.

Last week’s theme was something different (difficult to classify genre-wise/more experimental books). I make some links thematic, some topical, some more English-y. Please do let me know if you have ideas/suggestions/requests for future possible links.

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Welcome to the *Hearthfire!

I post once or twice a week, either on Wednesday or Monday and Friday:

Myth & Magic Mondays

Wordy Wednesdays

Fab Fiction Fridays

*This blog was originally entitled ‘Thoughts From the Hearthfire’, as I like the comfy, cosy, stories around the fire connotations, but it has drifted into something much more education-focused over the years. It’s still books, books and more books though, so do pull up a chair and get comfy!